It will take a certain period of time until the micro plan of each selected village gets approved by the Project/SPMU. To prevent people in selected villages from losing their interest in the Project and keep them involved in the Project, the Project will provide each selected village with EPAs. Eg. Generally the items of village infrastructure such as construction of Community Halls, village roads/bridges, water sources and storage tanks, Anganwadis, providing sports facilities, repairing of schools etc.

Key Activities

• Prioritization of EPAs
• Conducting EPAs

Prioritization of EPAs

 The NGOs hired by the Project should facilitate each selected village to identify critical problems faced by the village through a PRA and prioritize one or two most critical problems to be addressed as EPAs through discussion among participants in the meetings or workshops. As described in C2.3, the NGOs will need to lead the participants to prioritize among only EPAs candidates which are relevant to the contents of the Project. As the Project will equally allocate a certain amount of budget for each selected village, each selected village can choose any number of activities within the budget.

Conducting EPAs

The Project/SPMU have sent a technical team, composing at least one engineer, to each selected village and let the team to check if the EPA proposed is technically and financially feasible. If it is feasible, the team will make a cost estimate for the activities. The NGOs hired are supposed to persuade each selected village to contribute to EPAs from the village side by providing unskilled labor work and locally available materials. The NGO can also suggest that each selected village should consider the possibility of converging with relevant central or state schemes/missions, such as MGNREGA and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), so that the village can save the cost.